What Viewers Are Saying:
“Overall, the experience [of (un)seen] was powerful and a deep reminder of how the power of imagery and words can speak on their own without the need of an interpreter. I really enjoyed how each of the artists’ themes was creatively woven together to make a powerful statement around human value and worth.” – Sam Williams, Executive Director, Concord Prison Outreach
Read Sam’s poem, Social Curators, inspired by (un)seen by clicking here.
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“The conversations with and between Keith, Rashin, Steve and I are a long-awaited antidote to the unimaginable personal and collective grief we have experienced during the racial and global health pandemics of the last year.
Keith’s paintings confront the layers of trauma that exist in the North American landscape, pockmarked by lynching. Unlike other historic tragedies for now, Keith’s work is often the only gesture memorializing the places and honors the victims with a simultaneous monument to color and a keen attention to the play of light. Where Keith confronts the past, Steve interrogates the present in his photographs of penitentiaries. The aura of the nighttime palette creates an elusive visual description. In one of Steve’s images, it is difficult to reconcile how a perspective from quite a distance can still be so powerfully charged. Perhaps the distance, the darkness and the walls still cannot contain the experiences that want our notice.
Rashin adds a layer of tenderness to our conversation. Her work reminds us of the power of storytelling and of a shared longing for connection in the Father’s Lullaby. Rashin suspends time to create unapologetically, intimate grace filled sound and visual portraits. She also places a mirror on the racial disparities in the criminal justice system that echo Keith and Steve’s observations. This is a history that seems to repeat on command.
I entered this conversation in early April when rather than writing for this exhibit, Keith asked if I wanted to make work for the show. In the aftermath of the murders in Atlanta of eight women, six of Asian descent, I grasped more fully my hyper invisibility as an Asian American woman of Filipino ancestry. It did not matter my level of education, my status as a U.S. citizen, my job, my being a mother, a partner, a sister, or a friend. I am (un)seen.
My work is to walk the grounds of this grief. I have created a drawing pilgrimage to accompany and acknowledge this shattering. I excavate a layer below the surface of Keith and Steve’s landscapes. And I hear the songs from Rashin’s portraits as I dig deeper. Perhaps underlying all of our questions is a search to make sense of a mourning. Ross Gay captures the sentiment of this conversation for me.
What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying.
I’m saying: What if that is joy?”
– Lyssa Palu-ay
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(un)seen Virtual Panel
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
LYSSA PALU-AY
Palu-ay’s work explores nature, memory, ritual, and sacred space. Whether it be in the ancient Tibetan landscape or a remote corner of Maine, Palu-ay becomes a teller of stories about a lost place and time. Her work begins intuitively with the photograph but she also uses drawing and video to expand her dialogue with nature. Palu-ay received a BA in Political Science from Boston College with additional coursework in the Faith, Peace and Justice Program. She then earned an MFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Palu-ay is the Dean of justice, equity and transformation (JET) at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, MA.
The Shape of Grief is a site-specific installation that navigates the experience of identity from the perspective of an Asian American Filipina. This exploration contends with the storms of a societal anti-Asian climate and the subsequent aftermaths. The field of this environmental condition becomes a site of reflection in the work.
STEPHEN TOURLENTES
Stephen Tourlentes was born in Galesburg, Illinois and currently resides in Somerville, MA. He received his BFA from Knox College and an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where he is currently a visiting professor of photography. His work is included in many collections including the Princeton University Art Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago and has been exhibited at the Revolution Gallery, Michigan; Cranbook Art Museum, Michigan; and S.F. Camerawork, among others.
From his project statement: “We are living in the era of mass incarceration in the U.S. I discovered this by chance when a new prison was built in the town I grew up in in Illinois. On the outskirts of town the night sky was punctuated with a brilliant glow that changed my perception of the horizon. This transformation of the landscape revealed an unseen human cargo held in time and place.”
RASHIN FAHANDEJ
Rashin Fahandej is an Iranian-American multimedia artist and filmmaker. Her projects center on marginalized voices and the role of media, technology, and public collaboration in generating social change. A proponent of “Art as Ecosystem,” she defines her projects as “Poetic Cyber Movement for Social Justice,” where art mobilizes a plethora of voices by creating connections between public places and virtual spaces. She is the founder of “A Father’s Lullaby, “ a multi-platform, co-creative project that highlights the role of men in raising children and their absence due to racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Marginalia, a series of poetic documentaries about Baha’i immigrants of Iranian descent, narrates a historical persecution in their homeland.
In A Father’s Lullaby, Fahandej critically examines the structural racism of the US prison system and the impact of mass incarceration on lower-income communities, as well as arguing the case for its transformation through care and love and a shift in the nation’s philosophy. As an assistant professor at Emerson College, she runs courses in cooperation with the Nurturing Fatherhood Program at the Federal Probation Office in Boston, where students, formerly incarcerated fathers, and parole officers co-create personal documentary films using VR and 360° technology.
KEITH MORRIS WASHINGTON
The art of Keith Morris Washington investigates meaning and metaphor through landscape and portraiture. These landscapes and full-body portraits explore memory, identity and social themes, that are latent and often obscured by visible features, cultural (mis)understanding and time.